Book review: The everyday practice of valuation and investment: political imaginaries of shareholder value by Horacio Ortiz

In The Everyday Practice of Valuation and Investment: Political Imaginaries of Shareholder Value, Horacio Ortiz explores the social institutions and practices that produce and regulate stock pricing and valuation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic detail, this book has something important to teach us about the personal, ethical and political imaginaries that are at the core of how finance works, writes Johannes Lenhard. The Everyday Practice of Valuation and Investment: Political Imaginaries of Shareholder Value. Horacio Ortiz. Columbia University Press. 2021

Book review: Better business: how the B Corp movement is remaking capitalism by Christopher Marquis

In Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism, Christopher Marquis offers a new study of the history of the B Corp movement as well as its goals, international expansion and its struggles, arguing that it has the potential to redefine capitalism based on principles of accountability, performance, standards and transparency. Marquis’s access to the movement and ability to write organisational history make this book a fantastic read, finds Johannes Lenhard. If you are interested in this book, you can watch a video of the author Christopher Marquis discussing the B Corp movement, social impact and impact investing as part of an LSE student event organised by the Marshall Institute and recorded on 3 March 2021. Better Business: How the B Corp Movement is Remaking Capitalism. Christopher Marquis. Yale University Press. 2020

Autonomy and Automation. Computational modeling, reduction, and explanation in quantum chemistry

This paper discusses how computational modeling combines the autonomy of models with the automation of computational procedures. In particular, the case of ab initio methods in quantum chemistry will be investigated to draw two lessons from the analysis of computational modeling. The first belongs to general philosophy of science: Computational modeling faces a trade-off and enlarges predictive force at the cost of explanatory force. The other lesson is about the philosophy of chemistry: The methodology of computational modeling puts into doubt claims about the reduction of chemistry to physics

Responsibility and its derivatives – going beyond the ‘standard’ critique of neoliberalism

TRNKA, SUSANNA & CATHERINE TRUNDLE. 2017. Competing Responsibilities – The Ethics and Politics of Contemporary Life. Chicago: Duke University Press. 296pp. SC: $26.95. ISBN: 978-0822363750

Book review: Hustle and gig: struggling and surviving in the sharing economy by Alexandrea Ravenelle

In Hustle and Gig: Struggling and Surviving in the Sharing Economy, Alexandrea Ravenelle offers a new ethnographic study that examines working life for people in the gig economy that was so lauded as a way out of unemployment after the 2008 financial crisis, focusing on Uber, TaskRabbit, Kitchensurfing and AirBnB. Johannes Lenhard praises the breadth of sectors covered and the depth of ethnographic detail offered in this book, which opens space for further research into how gig work could, or indeed does, work better

With business consultants in China towards the economic anthropology of ethics

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Informational selves – a genealogy of how data became to increasingly define how we operate

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Autonomy and Automation. Computational modeling, reduction, and explanation in quantum chemistry

This paper discusses how computational modeling combines the autonomy of models with the automation of computational procedures. In particular, the case of ab initio methods in quantum chemistry will be investigated to draw two lessons from the analysis of computational modeling. The first belongs to general philosophy of science: Computational modeling faces a trade-off and enlarges predictive force at the cost of explanatory force. The other lesson is about the philosophy of chemistry: The methodology of computational modeling puts into doubt claims about the reduction of chemistry to physics

Validation of Simulation: Patterns in the Social and Natural Sciences

In most cases, the meaning of computer simulation is strongly connected to the idea numerical calculations. A computer simulation is a numerical solution of a complex mathematical problem. Therefore, the problem of validation of its results should be only a problem of judging the underlying computational methods. However, it will be argued, that this is not the case. It is consensus in literature that validation constitutes one of the central epistemological problems of computer simulation methods. Especially in the case of simulations in the social sciences the answers given by many authors are not satisfactory. The following paper attempts to show how the characteristics of simulation, i.e. the imitation of a dynamic, constitute the problem of validation even in the case of the natural sciences and what consequences arise. Differences as well as common grounds between social and natural sciences will be discussed.Generative Mechanism, Imitation, Patterns, Simulation, Validation

Boon and Bane: On the role of Adjustable Parameters in Simulation Models

We claim that adjustable parameters play a crucial role in building and applying simulation models. We analyze that role and illustrate our findings using examples from equations of state in thermodynamics. In building simulation models, two types of experiments, namely, simulation and classical experiments, interact in a feedback loop, in which model parameters are adjusted. A critical discussion of how adjustable parameters function shows that they are boon and bane of simulation. They help to enlarge the scope of simulation far beyond what can be determined by theoretical knowledge, but at the same time undercut the epistemic value of simulation models